Höngg's Turnip Lantern Parade: Five Processions, Five Drummers — and No Date
No other entry in this survey publishes as many times: five meeting points, each with its own assembly and departure time, ten times in all. Add five drummers, police and fire brigade on the routes, and a shared finish in front of the church. A timetable to the quarter hour. And exactly one field is blank: which Saturday.
📅 Start time, meeting point — and what the organiser actually published
Räbeliechtli Umzug Höngg
date still opennot published yet — Der Quartierverein nennt für 2026 bisher nur «Anfang November, an einem Samstagabend».
- Meeting point
- Kürbergstrasse / Am Börtli (Besammlung 18:30, Abmarsch 18:45) · Segantinistrasse / Regensdorferstrasse (18:30 / 18:45) · Tramstation Frankental (18:15 / 18:30) · Schulhaus Rütihof (18:15 / 18:30) · Schulhaus Am Wasser (18:30 / 18:45)
- Destination
- Platz vor der reformierten Kirche Höngg
- Food and drink
- Jedes Kind, das mit einem Räbeliechtli mitläuft, erhält gratis einen frischen Weggen
- In bad weather
- Findet bei jeder Witterung statt.
- Organiser
- Quartierverein Zürich-Höngg
A star march with five parades, each led by a drummer; police and fire brigade secure the routes.
Source: To the organiser's page · checked on 11 September 2026
📅 Visit-day check
Pick the day you are free — the answer comes from the verified ConvivaPlus dataset, not from a run you have to work out in your head.
| Session | Run | Opening hours | Evidence |
|---|
Calculated from the ConvivaPlus dataset — every row with its own source above.
Each bar is a documented evening. Dark = this parade, light = the nearest ones. A parade lasts an hour and often falls on the same evening as another — read only a date and you miss that the next village sets off at the same minute.
- Zürich · HönggRäbeliechtli Umzug Hönggnot published yet
🔎 What sets this parade apart from every other one
Five meeting points is the record in this survey. Friesenberg has four, Affoltern three, all the others one or two. Höngg sends out five processions from five directions, each led by a drummer, and has them converge on the square in front of the Reformed church. Police and fire brigade secure the routes — that too appears in no other entry in the dataset.
The timetable meanwhile gives away something written down nowhere. Two of the five points, the Frankental tram stop and the Rütihof schoolhouse, assemble at 18:15 and march off at 18:30 — a quarter of an hour before the other three. Both lie on the western edge of the district, furthest from the church. Read the timetable that way and it shows no arbitrariness but a calculation: the longer routes leave earlier so that all five arrive together. For families in Rütihof or Frankental that means, very practically, that going by the published 18:45 means chasing after your own procession.
And then the bread roll with a condition attached. It is free for every child who walks with a turnip lantern — not for every child standing there. That sounds like a triviality and is in fact the whole attitude of the evening: this is not a refreshment stand, it is a reward for taking part. Come without a turnip and you are welcome, but you will not be in the queue at the end.
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🎯 How not to end up in the dark at the wrong meeting point
In Höngg the choice of meeting point decides everything — and two of them leave earlier than the other three.
- 1Frankental and Rütihof leave 15 minutes earlierFrankental tram stop and Rütihof schoolhouse: assembly 18:15, departure 18:30. The other three – Kürbergstrasse/Am Börtli, Segantinistrasse/Regensdorferstrasse and the Am Wasser schoolhouse – assemble at 18:30 and leave at 18:45. Note the wrong time and you arrive after your own procession.
- 2Take the nearest point, not the best-known oneFive starting points mean there is no main parade. All five end in the same place. The whole point of a star march is that nobody has to cross the district first in order to reach a procession.
- 3The turnip lantern is the ticket for the bread rollWhat is published: every child who walks with a turnip lantern gets a fresh bread roll, free. If you are only coming to watch with your child, plan an alternative for the way home.
- 4Here the weather is not a provisoThe neighbourhood association states expressly that the parade goes ahead in any weather. In this survey only two organisers say so this clearly – Höngg and Friesenberg. Rain is therefore a clothing question, not a cancellation question.
🗺️ Where this parade sits in the season
The ConvivaPlus turnip lantern survey lists 22 parades, 16 of them with a verified date; in the canton of Zurich there are 12. The verified season runs from 30 October 2026 to 14 November 2026, the busiest evening being 6 November 2026 with 5 parades at once.
Höngg is missing from that count because the date is missing — and the note «on a Saturday evening» narrows it more than it first appears. In the verified season there are only two Saturdays on which parades run at all. One of them already carries four recorded parades, three of them in the city of Zurich. Should Höngg fall on the same evening, the most elaborate star march in the survey will compete with three other Zurich neighbourhood parades — and then it is not quality that decides but the postcode.
Turnip lantern parades nearby
Frequently asked questions about this parade
Answers from the verified dataset – no date is carried over from last year.
People also ask
Related questions from our magazine
Höngg, with five. Then come Friesenberg with four and Affoltern with three; the rest of the 22 recorded parades start from one or two places.
Every verified turnip lantern parade →Because five processions mean five routes running through neighbourhood streets at the same time — and because hundreds of children are out in the dark carrying a light, open flame or electric. Höngg is the only entry in this survey that mentions such a safeguard at all.
In a star march several processions start in different residential areas and converge on the same destination, instead of everyone gathering in one place first. In the city of Zurich the form is not unusual: Höngg does it with five processions, Friesenberg with four, Affoltern with three.
Every parade in the canton of Zurich →The ConvivaPlus verdict
As an evening this is the most elaborate entry in the whole survey, and you can see it in every detail: five processions, five drummers, a timetable to the quarter hour, the authorities on the routes. Anyone who has watched five chains of lights converge from five directions on the same square understands why a neighbourhood association takes this on. Our recommendation is correspondingly clear.
What is missing is the very simplest thing. An event planned to the quarter hour but naming no day demands more attention from out-of-district families than it should — «a Saturday evening in early November» leaves two, perhaps three candidates. Check zuerich-hoengg.ch in October; anything else would be guesswork.
Freshness note: Meeting points, times, destination, refreshments and the weather rule come from zuerich-hoengg.ch, source read on 8 September 2026 – on that day it was checked specifically whether a date had appeared in the meantime. It had not. That the two earlier departures relate to the distance to the finish is our reading of the timetable, not a statement by the organiser.
Check the latest: ConvivaPlus Turnip Lantern Dataset 2026 – Zürich · Höngg →
- ◆A timetable says more than an announcement: nobody writes down why Frankental and Rütihof set off earlier. It is there in the numbers all the same — 18:30 against 18:45, and both lie on the edge. Read event details as a list and you see five times. Read them as a calculation and you see the intention: arrive together, not leave together.
- ◆The condition in the small print is the actual message: the bread roll is free for every child who walks with a turnip lantern. Of all the recorded parades that mention something to eat, only this one ties the gift to taking part. That is not stinginess — it is this vein's plainest statement about what a turnip lantern parade actually is: not something you watch.
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Höngg sends out five processions from five directions – the highest figure in the ConvivaPlus survey. Two of them set off 15 minutes earlier so that everyone reaches the church together.
Discussion
3 voices from the community
Wenn die fünf Züg vo allne Site gliichziitig uf de Chileplatz zuechönd, isch das jedes Jahr wider de Momänt. Mir stönd immer scho zäh Minute vorher obe und lueged zue.
Achtung: Rütihof und Frankental start früener als die andere drü. Mir händ das s erscht Jahr verwütscht, wil mir uf 18.45 plant händ — und sind denn hindenache gloffe.
De Weggen git s nu, wenn s Chind würklich es Liechtli treit. Findi eigentlich richtig — es isch kei Verpflegigsstand, es isch e Belohnig fürs Mitlaufe.
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🏮 Turnip lantern parade · 11 September 2026